USA > Texas > A comprehensive history of Texas, 1685-1897 > Part 7
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474
A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF TEXAS.
During the upper cretaceous the sea extended from New Jersey along the bor- der of the Atlantic and Gulf of Mexico, covering a large part of Texas and the western portion of the continent. The rocks of this period in Eastern and South- ern Texas consist of the sandstones of the Lower Cross-Timbers, the clays lying east of them, the white limestone of the Dallas-Austin region, the blue and yellow clays of the main Black-Waxy Prairies, and the more sandy beds succeeding. Along the Rio Grande border the same rocks are found except the lower sands, which are missing everywhere south of the Brazos River, save perhaps along the flank of the Diabolo Mountains. In addition, however, we find extensive deposits of still higher beds, consisting of sands and clays with seams of coal, and above these a great thickness of limestone and clays, all of which are the direct continua- tion of similar beds in the western portion of the continent. In the trans-Pecos country, the closing of this period was marked by vast flows of lava, which occur not only as thin beds among the uppermost members of the series and cut them in the form of dykes in various directions, but cover these beds in places to a depth of three hundred feet.
These eruptions were accompanied by great faulting and slipping of portions of the earth's crust, so that along the fault-lines it sometimes happens that two beds of rock, one of which was originally two thousand feet above the other, lie side by side, showing that one has fallen or risen that far below or above its proper place. This volcanic activity is manifested cast of the Pecos by dykes of basalt coming up through the cretaceous, and by knobs or hills of the same material forming a direct line from Mount Inge to Pilot Knob south of Austin. The earliest of the two principal lines of this faulting in West Texas runs north and south, the other east and west. To the action of the latter we probably owe the escarpment paralleling the Southern Pacific Railroad west of San Antonio and extending eastward to and beyond Austin, known in part as the Balcones. To the effects of the other is seem- ingly due the fact that these beds have so narrow an exposure in the vicinity of Eagle Pass, and that the line between the tertiary and cretaceous in that area has practically a north and south direction.
The close of the cretaceous ushered in the cenozoic era, marked by more modern forms of life and a varied mammalian fauna. The waters of the present Gulf of Mexico were still connected directly with the Pacific Ocean, as is evidenced by the occurrence of certain species of shells in the lower Texan beds and those of like age on the Pacific Slope, which are not found in contemporaneous deposits of the Atlantic border proper. All of that portion of the State north of the Balcones and west of the ninety-seventh meridian, including trans-Pecos Texas, was dry land. From this land area the rivers brought down their burdens of sand, clay, and lime, and deposited them in bays or comparatively shallow waters similar to those of the present Gulf coast. Succeeding the earliest clays and limestones there was a great coal-making age, and in it were formed the deposits of brown coal and lignites in beds extending along the entire Gulf shore of that time, from Red River to the Rio Grande. Then followed a period of marine or brackish-water deposits, accompanied by or alternating with lagoons and peat-bogs, in which were formed thin beds of brown coal and the iron ores of East Texas. To this period belong also the red hills and the beds of green-sand marl of the same region.
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DUMBLE-PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY, GEOLOGY, ETC.
Following this came a series of clay deposits and a belt of sands, sandy clays, and brown coals, such as are seen at Rockland, Trinity, LaGrange, and westward to the Rio Grande. Upon these were deposited another series of clays, and with them, so far as surface exposures are known, ended the eocene or lower division of the tertiary. It was during or just following this period that the Gulf of Mexico was finally separated from the Pacific Ocean, the marine faunas of the two areas being quite different after this.
As this additional land was added to the pre-existing area by gradual elevation above the sea, the degradation of the entire surface was continued and the materials were carried out and deposited in the waters off shore. This continued erosion so lowered the level of the region of the Llano Estacado that towards the end of the middle tertiary or miocene time a lake was either formed there or possibly may have been extended southward from the northern lakes, and into this a considerable section of the country was drained. In the limy sands of this lake-basin (aptly termed mortar-beds by Professor Marsh) are great quantities of bones of the land animals which lived in and were characteristic of that age. Along the Gulf shore, however, marine conditions still existed, as is proved by the boring of the Galveston deep well, in which, at a depth of over two thousand feet, shells were found identi- cal with those of the same period in Florida and the Bahamas.
The pliocene, or upper tertiary, was a period of great erosive activity. The lake condition of the Llano Estacado continued and was extended to the area of the coastal slope south of the Balcones, but whether as a direct continuation of the Llano lake or as a separate basin has not yet been positively determined. Its rock materials consist of heavy beds of gravel and sand, clays, and conglomerates of sand with balls and fragments of clay, capped by a white, limy clay known as adobe. In the eastern portion of the State the lime is largely replaced by ferruginous material, and in many places the middle clay member is missing and the adobe caps the gravel bed, or so permeates it as to form heavy beds of conglomerate. These beds are characterized, both in the Llano Estacado region and on the Coastal Slope, by the vertebrate fossils they contain.
West of the ninety-seventh meridian and south of the Balcones this adobe cov- ered the entire area, and, where it became dry land through the drainage or drying up of the lakes, formed a wide, white, chalk-like plain.
This whole area has also been subjected to oscillations of more or less local character, besides sharing in continental movements, the elevation of the Rocky Mountains having given it its present tilt to the southeast.
With the emergence of these deposits the tertiary era closed and the quaternary began. During this period ( and probably carlier also) lake conditions existed through the trans-Pecos, in which area erosive activity was very great, the valleys between the mountain ranges, which were the sites of these lakes, being filled in places with detritus to a depth of more than twelve hundred feet. A lake existed also in the country east of the Llano Estacado, but at a considerably lower level.
On the Llano Estacado and Coastal Slope depressions and valleys were eroded, and in these were deposited the ashy sands of the Equus beds, with the fossil remains of extinct horses, etc., followed in the litter area by the coastal clays and sands.
476
A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF TEXAS.
Physical Geography .- The greater physical divisions of Texas are ' the Gulf Slope, the Central Basin, and the Mountain Systems.
The first two of these divisions are series of plains, while the last includes the connecting link between the Rocky Mountain ranges crossing from New Mexico into Mexico, between the Pecos and the Rio Grande, as well as two areas now much degraded, but once forming portions of ranges of great age. The plains of the Gulf Slope may be divided into the Coast Prairies, the Tertiary or Lignitic belt, the Black-Waxy Prairie, and the Grand Prairie. The subdivisions of the Central Basin are the Dennded Areas, the Seymour Plateau, and the Llano Estacado. The Mountain Systems comprise the Wichita Mountains, the Granite Highlands of the Central Mineral Region, and the trans-Pecos Mountains and their intervening lake-basins or flats.
The Coast Prairies .- The Coast Prairies present in their substructure the most recent accretion to the land area of the State. This marginal fringe or plain, which is almost level and extends interiorward for a distance varying from fifty to one hundred miles, is but a portion of the last terrane deposited in the waters of the Gulf. The elevation which added it to the land surface was insufficient to raise the entire area above the sea, and a portion of it is, therefore, to be found below the rolling waves of the American Mediterranean. Its structural limit is marked by the one-hundred-fathom line of sea-depth, beyond which the bottom of the sea slopes downward with great rapidity. Were the level of the sea lowered six hundred feet, it would, therefore, add many square miles of land to our coast, and an increase of depth of one hundred feet would decrease the present area of the State one-tenth and engulf some of our fairest cities. While in a general way the features of this area are a continuation of those of the other Gulf States east of Texas, there are, nevertheless, striking differences to be noted. The comparative absence of marsh land is one of these, for, except the Sabine marshes, in the eastern portion of the State, there is comparatively little marsh land on the coast. It is true that, owing to the defective drainage, many low places are to be found in which water stands in small lakes for some time after heavy rains ; yet these are not true marshes, which, outside the limited area of sea-marsh, exist only in some of the bottom lands adja- cent to the larger streams. The coast line differs also from that of the other Gulf States in having an almost continuous chain of islands and peninsulas along its front, instead of being indented by large bays extending many miles inland.
The plain is new-born. The eroding fingers of Time have only begun to hollow channels in its surface. The streams, crossing it in their flow gulfward, move slug- gishly between low banks, with few if any tributaries, and many of the channels, on their approach to the Gulf, are buried in large estuaries. The Brazos alone of the Texas rivers has cut its way through the clay of the belt which it did so much to form, and empties its waters directly into the Gulf. The land bordering these estu- aries, instead of sloping gradually up from the water, forms high, vertical banks, and
' The early writers on Texas ( 1836 to IS40) divided the State into the level, undulating, and mountainous or hilly region. The first corresponded to the Coast Prairies of the present clas- sification ; the second to the Lignitic and Black-Waxy subdivisions ; while the third was at first our Grand Prairie, and later, as the borders were extended, it was made to include the mountain region west of the Pecos.
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DUMBLE- - PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY, GEOLOGY, ETC.
open prairies stretch to their very edge. The increase in elevation of this plain from the Gulf shore to the northwest is so gentle as to be almost imperceptible, its average being only about one foot per mile. It is slightest near the coast, becoming some- what more rapid as the interior border is reached.
Outside the drainage channels the level of the surface is broken only in two ways. The first of these comprises small mounds, which dot the surface in many portions of the area, the origin of which have been variously attributed to the work of ants, the results of " hog-wallow," and to the action of mud volcanoes, such as are now to be seen in the delta of the Mississippi. These mounds are usually only a few yards in diameter and rarely three feet in height. The other and more pronounced interruption is a series of mounds, of which Damon's, in Brazoria County, may be cited as an example. This mound covers ten thousand acres, and has a vertical height of eighty feet. The extreme flatness of the country surround- ing it makes it an object of much greater prominence than it otherwise would be. It probably marks the site of an island in the quaternary seas, of rock materials older than the coast clays which surround and partially cover it.
Along the banks of the streams is a growth of timber, and dotted here and there over the surface of the prairies lying between them, trees, single or in clumps or motts, break the general monotony of the landscape. In the eastern portion the long-leaf pine-flats cover a small area, and the short-leaf or loblolly pine-forests extend as far west as Houston. For many years the prairies were given over to stock-raising, and the land was not considered valuable for agricultural purposes, when, in fact, the sands and clays of this area form excellent soils, the value of which is being proved on the fruit farms between Buffalo Bayou and the Brazos.
The Lignitic Timber Belt .- Passing from the level coast country to the lig- nitic timber belt, the surface gradually becomes more and more undulating, and farther inland rolling and even hilly ground succeeds it. The northern limit of this plain is the main Black-Waxy Prairies, and in areal extent it covers nearly one- third of the State. In elevation it varies from one to seven hundred feet in East Texas (which latter height is, however, only attained by a few of the iron-capped hills), while the highlands of the Bordas, on the southwest, rise more than one hundred feet higher. The region, although treated as a single plain. is in reality compound, and might more concisely be described a> plains and valleys in plains. The plains are, if terms may be applied which suggest their geologic relationship, the Reynosa, Fayette, Yegua, Marine, and the Lignitic. The principal basins are those of the Nueces and Red Rivers. The intermediate streams form valleys nar- row in comparison with these, but, nevertheless, by their number have partially destroyed the ancient plateau whose remnants scattered through the area tell plainly of its former extent.
The Reynosa, or that strip of neocene deposits which forms the first of the component plains immediately north and west of the Coast Prairies, might almost be considered a part of that area but for its more undulatory character and the different rock materials of which it is composed. In the place of heavy clays with interstratified beds of sand, sand and gravel, with clay and limestone, occur. East of the Colorado the uppermost beds of this plain are present as sand and gravel, colored more or less strongly red by the ferruginous matter they have re-
478
A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF TEXAS.
ceived from the iron-ore region north of them. To the west of that stream the ferruginous matter is replaced by lime derived from the cretaceous area north of it, and forms the adobe rock of the southwest. These upper beds have had an arcal distribution much greater than at present, and, while they may not have covered the higher points of the old iron-capped plateau, are known, by the occurrence of frag- mentary deposits, to have covered all of the lower-lying lands of East Texas. In the west the adobe or lime conglomerate covered nearly the entire region north- ward to the Balcones, and now foris the divides between all of the principal streams and occupies the highest elevations of the region.
The general topography of the eastern portion of this plain is undulating, hut there are places where, from greater induration and stronger erosion, decided hills are formed. Such are those near Willis and the Sun Mound west of Waller. In the west the Reynosa prairies sweep northward in gently swelling ridges to the escarpment south of the Nueces River, which is best known by its Spanish name of Bordas. So steep is the descent to the north from the top of this plain that it is often difficult to find a suitable place for a wagon to descend into the valley, which lies from one to three hundred fect below.
Immediately west of the clays which occur below the base of the Reynosa Plain are the underlying Fayette sands and sandstones, with opalized wood and fine beds of clay. These deposits, like the Reynosa, form a gently inclined plain with gradual ascent on their southern slope, but breaking away abruptly on the north and west, thus forming a disconnected range of hills whose northward-facing scarps and bluffs (often one hundred and fifty fect in height) can be traced from Rockland, on the Neches, westward by Trinity, Muldoon, and Tilden to the Rio Grande. To these beds of sandstone is due one of the marked features of the course of all of the Texas rivers in their gulfward flow, -- a sharp cast or northeast- ward deflection, such as that of the Trinity on the northern boundary of Walker County.
Passing towards the interior, the next subdivision is a broad belt of clays and lignites, which here and there from local causes assert themselves in the form of hills, to whose gently rolling area has been given the name of a stream-the Yegua -which flows entirely across it at its most typical locality.
North and west these are succeeded by more compact rock materials and a more rugged topography, -those of the Marine Beds,-with brown sandstones in the west and heavy deposits of iron ores in the east, which have withstood the wear of time and preserved, as rugged timber-covered hills, the highest elevations of the whole area, save only those of the Bordas. North of these are the Lignitic Clays whose gently rolling hills melt almost imperceptibly, from a topographic point of view, into the Black-Waxy Prairies of the cretaceous. The stream channels which cross the Lignitic Plain show that they have passed through many changes of level, and their broad, terraced bottoms tell of elevations and depressions, while the lakes and deserted channels plainly speak of their capricious change of course. The castern portion of this plain is densely forested, with only a few scattered prairies ; the central part is less thickly wooded, and usually with trees of more stunted growth, while that portion west of the Frio River comprises rolling prairies with thickets of mesquite and jungles of chaparra! and prickly pear. In this timber belt
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ONION CRABK-TRAVIS COUNTY. Contact of Austin Chalk and Volcanic Ash.
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DUMBLE-PHYSICAL GEOGRAPHY, GEOLOGY, ETC.
-the low lands covered with pine, the uplands clothed with oak and hickory-is found the termination of the forests of the Atlantic region, which to the west are gradually replaced with plants more akin to the Mexican flora.
The Black-Waxy Prairies .- Lying north and west of the Lignitic Plain, and scarcely separable by appearance from the northwestern portion of it, is that great body of agricultural land, the famous Black-Waxy Prairies. Its greatest width is on Red River, where it extends from Denison eastward almost to the northeastern corner of the State, -a distance of one hundred and forty miles. Going southward it becomes more and more narrow, until on the Colorado it has a width of only ten miles. Towards the Rio Grande, however, it again widens out and extends along that river for eighty-five miles. Southwest of San Antonio, while the materials remain the same as those of the region to the northeast, it gradually loses its black- waxy character, owing most probably to difference of climatic conditions. The western boundary of this plain is formed by the Lower Cross-Timbers between Red River and the Brazos ; south of the latter stream it is approximately a line joining Waco, Belton, and Austin, from which point to the Rio Grande it occupies the area between the Lignitic Plain and the foot of the Balcones. Its rock material is, generally speaking, marly, as it consists of clays and lime-rock, which occur not only as such, but intermingled in almost every imaginable proportion.
Its topography is for the most part gently rounded hills, whose graceful con- tours pleasingly suggest their English homologue, -- the "downs." In the more limy portions, known as the Austin Limestone, vertical bluffs fifteen to twenty feet in height are not uncommon, where earth fractures have somewhat disturbed the regularity of the deposits, where erosion has cut through them along some stream channel or along their western face, and where a scarp is formed by the more rapid weathering of the underlying clay. On the Rio Grande there is a more broken surface, -higher hills and a more precipitous scarp,-due to the greater induration of the rocky materials and the different conditions of erosion.
In elevation this plain varies from three hundred and fifty to five hundred feet above the sea in the cast, but west of San Antonio it rises to seven hundred feet and over. South of Austin there is a considerable elevation known as Pilot Knob, -a group of rounded hills of basalt, remnants of one of the old volcanoes which existed in the cretaceous sea. Other similar remnants and "necks" occur nearer Austin, and to the westward from San Antonio to the Rio Grande, as dykes and hills. While this plain is predominantly a prairie region outside the Lower Cross- Timber belt, nevertheless it is not entirely barren of trees and shrubs. Great live- oaks dot its expanses, and the streams which meander across it are sometimes fringed with narrow strips of timber, often thickly overgrown with moss in the more southern portions of the plain.
The Grand Prairie .- East of the Colorado River that arca included in the Grand Prairie is but the continuation of the black prairie in general character, modi- fied somewhat by the harder rock materials of which it is composed. West and south of that portion of the main area, however, the character changes, and in the country between the Colorado and the Pecos and in the numerous detached masses that mark the former extension of the same conditions as far north as the head-waters of the Brazos a topography exists largely controlled by a persistent bed of limestone, the
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A COMPREHENSIVE HISTORY OF TEXAS.
surface rock of a greater part of the area, which lies in level or gently inclined beds, forming a vast plateau on the south and flat-topped buttes and mesas in the Basin Region on the north. No other single rock formation has had so wide an influence on the topographic development of the State. That part of the Grand Prairie between the Upper and Lower Cross-Timbers, the former of which occupies the surface exposure of its lowest (geologically ) sandy beds, has been called the Fort Worth division. At Decatur and elsewhere its western boundary is a bold escarpment, but at places it loses this precipitousness and rises more gradually from the older beds below it. The waters of the Trinity and Brazos have cut their way through the plain. The elevation of this divison has an average along its eastern border of five hundred feet, which in its western part increases to twelve hundred or fifteen hundred feet. Points within its boundaries are still higher. The Plateau division, beginning near Austin, stretches westward from the Colorado across the Pecos and is merged into that mountainous region. It is entirely cut through only by the channels of the Colorado and Pecos Rivers. Between these streams it forms a gently sloping plain, deeply furrowed by canyons along its southern border, its northern boundary cut into bays and promontories and carved into fantastic crenu- lations by the head-waters of the Colorado. North of the main plateau are de- tached ridges of flat-topped hills and single buttes or mesas, all of like character, scattered over an area of thousands of square miles.
Beginning at Austin, at an elevation of only six hundred feet, this Plateau division rises to the westward, and in the extreme western part of Gillespie County reaches an altitude of two thousand two hundred and fifty feet. It maintains this altitude and even increases it towards the west. The southern boundary of this plateau is the escarpment of elevation known as the Balcones, which practically continues from the Colorado westward to the Rio Grande, and has almost vertical walls which in places attain a height of one hundred to two hundred feet above the black prairie at its base. From the foot of this escarpment, or from the canyons cut into it, flow the great springs at San Marcos, New Braunfels, and elsewhere.
The topography of this platean is that of simple drainage erosion without ex- tensive denudation. The streams, with their many-pronged branches, have cut numberless deep and narrow canyons, but the hard limestone layers have not been destroyed rapidly enough to keep pace with the stream erosion, and innumerable peaks and buttes, ridges, and mesas are the result. Its surface is almost treeless except the low mesquite and similar trees and the fine growth of pecan along the canyons of its southward flowing streams. Its agricultural possibilities are far greater than have been supposed, and much of the area now used only for grazing can be profitably utilized for farming purposes.
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